The Weekly Visitors

Sarah Lahey was three steps inside the back door of Tasmania Police Headquarters when Virginia Collins rang from Vaucluse Nursing Home. Virginia had called her only a handful of times since Jane Lahey moved into the facility, and never without cause. She said Jane was very distressed and asking for her. Sarah turned round before she reached the corridor, left the case and Karl Jenkins behind her, and drove to Lindisfarne with her stitched hand tight on the wheel.

Jane had woken from her afternoon nap calling out, and the staff could not settle her even once she was fully awake. The word she kept repeating was Killerton. Virginia met Sarah at the entrance and, walking her to Jane's suite, stumbled over the name until Sarah supplied it. Sarah knew it from a scrap of paper she had taken from Detective Sergeant Charlie Claiborne's desk: two words she was not meant to have seen, and whose significance she had not yet worked out.

Bob Gangley was already in the room. He was a resident at Vaucluse and had been Jane's friend since before Sarah's mother was born, one of a trio with Thelma Jeffries that went back to their youth. He told Sarah she looked unwell, then announced that Jane was dreaming of Killerton again. Sarah fastened on the word. Jane brushed Bob off as an old man who did not know what he was talking about. Bob held her stare and took nothing back. He knew more than Jane wanted said, and both of them knew it.

Brooke Tanner, a young carer new enough that Sarah had never seen her, knocked at the open door to ask Virginia whether anyone had seen Jamie Greyson that afternoon. Virginia had not seen him all week. Jamie was a nursing assistant at Vaucluse and had been missing for several days. His sister, Louise Jeffries, had already reported him missing to police, and his partner of a decade, Luke Smith, was the investigation's primary suspect. Sarah was one of the detectives working the case.

Jane mentioned, as though it were common knowledge, that Jamie worked there and that, although he was not assigned to her, he and his partner visited her at least once a week. Sarah put Luke's name to the partner. Jane went quiet, then wept, and said that she would be gone soon and Sarah ought to know. Luke Smith was her grandson. Sarah's first fear was that he was her brother. Jane told her he was her cousin.

The account Jane gave was short and softened at every edge. Her firstborn, she said, had been a daughter by a young British man she met while travelling in Europe; he had looked after her in England until the birth, the baby was given up for adoption, and Jane came home broken-hearted. Luke had traced her several years earlier through DNA tests and adoption records, and now he came every week. She spoke of him with open pride. It was the version Jane had kept ready for decades, and it left out far more than it told.

Sarah had spent days treating Luke as the likeliest explanation for Jamie's disappearance. She called him a monster. Jane, calm now, told her she had it all wrong. Sarah asked whether Luke knew about her, and Jane admitted that he did. Sarah left with Jane calling her name, Bob muttering behind her, and Virginia, who had been crying alongside Jane, trying to explain to someone.

Outside the entrance Sarah stopped, bent over with her hands on her knees, and fought down a panic attack. Then she went back in, showed her badge to Lorraine Pike at reception and demanded the contact details Vaucluse held for Luke Smith and Jamie Greyson. Lorraine wrote them on a sheet of paper and handed it over without asking why a detective needed them that way. Sarah took the sheet to her car and shut the door.